Tea with Tomoyo
by Ciircee
Summary: In the interim, would you care for tea, Daidouji-san?


Disclaimer: CLAMP.  But I think Chelle-sama and Sakura-san could pull it off, too.  Very nicely.

Author's note: If you're a big fan you'll know the episode number.  I can't recall it right now…sixty-odd.  ^.^

Dedication: To Chelle, who was patient.  

_Tea with Tomoyo_

Eriol tugged his tie off, stuffing it into his pocket as he lifted a basketball out of the storage bins on the practice field.  The magic stretched out and pulled back, bringing the ball bouncing to him in a neat line.  More magic flared.

"Me, Eriol!"  Ruby Moon held out her hands toward him from across the basketball court.  "I want to show Suppi my shot before Sakura-san gets here."  Pink hair fluttered in the twilight breeze.  

"Ruby Moon," Spinel Sun, large and imposing, sighed affectionately.  "You've showed me before."

"But not in my true form!"

With a grin Eriol sent a nice, hard pass from the chest to his Moon Guardian.  "Be quick.  They're coming."

Really, he thought as she took aim, there was little difference.  Nakuru was as graceful and sure of herself as Ruby Moon, brighter and more effusive, but essentially the same.  She had a heart that was often soft and kind.  

"Suppi!  Catch!"  She'd already caught the rebound and sent the ball on its way with a neat pass from behind her back.  Spinel swatted it out of the air, good humored, and rolled the ball beneath one large paw.  Eriol wondered if his Sun Guardian knew that he was showing such open enjoyment.  

"Eriol?"  He'd stiffened.  Eriol turned his head casually and saw Sakura-san, Li-kun, Daidouji-san, and the small form of Keroberus standing at the gate.  They were staring openly at the moving ball.

"Ah."  He smiled.  "Send it along, Spinel.  The game's started."  Spinel sent the ball whipping at him and he was forced to push it down, bouncing it, before he caught it.  He caught the words 'ghost' and 'Clow' from Sakura's group.  They, meaning he, Ruby and Spinel, were quite hidden from sight.  It wasn't quite invisibility; the Li would have quickly found a way past that gambit.  It was more like being a step beyond the world.  Touching the ball made them visible, true, but it was too fast and distorted to see, even by Daidouji's clever video camera.  He dribbled the ball thoughtfully for a moment.  "Spinel," he tossed the ball back, "you and Ruby Moon bring it inside.  I'm going to lay out the maze.  I think we'll leave the poor piano alone for now."

The two guardians nodded and the glowing basketball took off like a shot.  A moment later he could see them in the windows, hovering the ball with twin sweeps of their wings…waiting for their guests to join them.  With a happy, slightly mischievous smile, he began to set the spell.  He hummed slightly as he inscribed the symbols he wanted.  There were many cards that Sakura-san could use to defeat the maze.  Her own maze would negate it or she could be very clever and use loop, since that change had not taken in her hasty expenditure of energy.   "Just a few more, Sakura-san," he said quietly, his circle coming to a quick blaze of power and rising into the air to settle over the school.  

"Eriol, you're finished?"  Ruby Moon perched on a narrow window ledge above him.

"Did you lose them?" he asked in answer.  He lifted his arms slightly, a signal that he was ready to be lifted.  

Ruby Moon swept down with a toss of hair and a small smile.  "Just for a little bit.  Spinel is waiting for them."  

Which he could see when they stopped at the open third-floor window.  Rather than maneuver through the narrow opening, an irritation when he wanted speed, Eriol opened a large, ornate stone door in the wall.  Why settle for the ordinary when it was such a joy to create beauty?  It swung open at his touch and disappeared without regret when he stepped through.  The ball bounced into his outstretched hands with a small, unnecessary burst of magic.  

"A little back-court strategy, Spinel.  Ruby."  He bounced it idly as his quasi-descendant, his protégée, his former-self's creation, and Daidouji Tomoyo rounded the top of the stairs and stopped at the end of the hall.   He tossed the ball into the air and then threw it to Ruby Moon.  He was already running.  They all were.

Ruby Moon was laughing.  "Suppi!" The ball snapped diagonally across the narrow hall. "Quick!"  The clattering footsteps were getting closer. 

"Honestly, Ruby Moon," Spinel huffed and sent it over to her again as she drew level.  "I can't get the door if I have the ball."

Eriol chuckled and clapped his hands, calling for a pass.  "You can't open it anyways.  You'd tear it off."  Ruby Moon yanked the door open, harder than necessary, and they all three tumbled into the classroom.  Eriol's momentum carried him beyond his guardians and into the middle of the room.  

"And you don't have hands."  Ruby Moon reached out to catch a hovering paw, stepping back from the door as she did so.  Their pursuers had caught them at last.  Which had been Eriol's intention entirely.  "Eriol, I want the ball."

"In just a moment."  He dropped the ball into the same pocket of space and time that he occupied, making it 'vanish'.  "They have to close the door to activate the maze and they know that the ball came in here."  And hiding the ball not only made it invisible it also removed every power signature from the space and time occupied by the other four children in the room.  Just as he'd hoped, they closed the door.  Probably hoping to keep the ball trapped.  He grinned.  They needn't have worried about the ball.  He skirted a desk and Keroberus' floating form and laid a hand on the wall.  This time he made the door fancifully pretty, curving, curling iron.  "After you," he gestured grandly.  With a giggle Ruby Moon slipped past him, taking the offered basketball from his hands as she went.  

Spinel paused on the other side.  "Are you coming through?"  

"No, they'll open in on you in just a moment.  I'll set up a mark here so that we'll be able to find the way outside.  Then I'll come."  

It actually took several moments for his adversaries to decide to look elsewhere while he set out a fixed route to use out of the building.  He gave it more attention than necessary.  He looked up only at the sound of the bouncing basketball and just in time to see the door slide shut.  Trapping him in the classroom.  He could, Eriol mused, simply open another door and wait for Ruby Moon or Spinel to come for him.  Perhaps he would have, if it hadn't been for Daidouji.

"Hiiragizawa-san?  Will you come out from hiding?"  Tomoyo had lowered her camera and was looking over her shoulder.  "Because I don't think opening the door will help."

A gentleman's manners demanded that he stay to keep her from being frightened.  And if she already knew he was there, he might as well make himself visible.  "Of course, Daidouji-san."  He stepped into regular space and took a seat at his desk.  "May I ask how you knew I was here?"  

He was caught in her engaging, cheerful smile as she made her way to her own desk, sitting sideways so that they could still see each other.  "I didn't until you came out."

"Hoist on my own petard," Eriol smiled, raising his eyebrows.  Why hadn't Kaho told him how clever Daidouji was?  This was twice now that she'd surprised him.  "I didn't want you to be scared on your own, in any case.  You weren't supposed to get separated."  Overly-enthusiastic Ruby Moon at work again, he supposed.

"I wasn't scared.  Sakura-chan will find her way back to me very quickly."

"Of course.  In the interim, would you care for tea, Daidouji-san?"  With a wave of his hand, and a flux of power the girl sitting in front of him couldn't see, a lavish, English high-tea was laid out on his desk top complete with exquisite china and iced cakes.  He lifted the creamer.  "Milk?"

"Yes, please. Sugar?"  She offered the bowl out to him, setting it back down as he shook his head.  "I hoped you would be here," she said conversationally.  

Eriol selected a bite-sized lemon feather cake and set it on his plate.  He put another onto hers at her nod.  "Really?  And why is that, Daidouji-san?"

He nibbled the icing, vanilla, his favorite, and waited for her to answer.   She stirred her tea and he realized she was thinking deeply about her answer.  And that he rather liked it.  Eriol often felt that people didn't think enough before speaking and as a magician it was a bit of an affront.

"Because you treasure Sakura-chan very much," she said at last.  Her blue eyes shone with a quiet happiness that made Eriol feel peaceful.  He hadn't realized he'd been worried about what, exactly, Daidouji might say.  Or what she might have thought about what he was doing.  "You're very gentle with her.  You won't let her get hurt.  Not by you or by her feelings if you hurt somebody that Sakura-chan loves."  Her eyes clouded slightly as she ate her cake and selected another.  "But you scare her."

"I don't like that part," he admitted.  He thought about how much he could risk telling her.  There was no way to determine how much perceptive Tomoyo might be able to recall.  Love was very strong indeed and magic could rarely do anything to counter it.  "Sakura-san is very strong and very happy."  Courage and joy personified, he'd told Spinel after his first day in school.  "Sometimes strength and happiness are hard to balance, but Sakura-san can do that.  And she can be stronger still and still be so happy.  Her rarest power is to make other people happy."

He managed to meet Tomoyo's eyes and offered her a cheerful smile.  

She frowned.  "Sakura-chan's power is your most important thing, isn't it, Hiiragizawa-san?"

"No.  Sakura-san's happiness is.  But because she is Sakura-san, I think that no matter what everything will be all right."

"You're very lonely.  For a long time."  

"Yes."  Eriol refilled his cup.  Tomoyo held her hand over hers, finished.  "I'm not alone.  And I'm not always lonely…"

"But in the deep part, there is always something lonely," Tomoyo finished softly.  "Because you don't yet have the thing that will make you happiest.  It's not Sakura-chan's happiness.  May I ask what it is?"

Eriol wondered if maybe the night air had blown open the private parts of his soul, and Daidouji's.  Maybe it was just being understood.  "You're a very lovely girl, Daidouji-san."  She tilted her head, a pretty, amused smile playing at her lips as her hair fell in soft halo of curls.  He wasn't sure, exactly, why reaching out to quickly and lightly touch the back of her hand felt so very daring.  "Everybody says that.   But I meant your heart and they didn't."

Something swam in her eyes for a moment, something like tears and then her fingers were returning the gentle, fleeting caress.  "I won't remember having tea with you."  It wasn't a question.

It was good, because he didn't want to have to answer it.  "I heard you practicing again today, Daidouji-san.  It sounds like a very pretty song but I can never hear the words.  Will you sing now?  Before the others come back?"  He needed to wipe away the tea and her memories of it; it would be easiest if she closed her eyes, like she often did when she sang.  

"You won't tell me, but I think I know."  His secret hope.  And maybe Tomoyo did know because she sang without question, her eyes bright on his for long moments.  It seemed to him that the simple melody and the simple words captured exactly those things he longed for most.  A quiet time, people he liked and people he loved.  A new day with the warmth of old feelings, bright with everyday happiness that was his own and magnified by that of those he loved best.  He felt something inside of himself stir into wakefulness and he smiled. 

Tomoyo's eyes slid closed.

He was as gentle in this magic as he'd been when he'd created his guardians.  

"Eriol?"  Ruby Moon and Spinel hovered outside a plain opening in the wall.  

Lights flared on in the room, in the hall, in the windows across the way.  Eriol left his desk and tugged his tie out of his pocket.  "Did you put the basketball back with the others?" he asked, settling onto Spinel's back as Ruby Moon let the door seal itself.  He could see Shadow resolve itself around the girl he'd just left.  "There, Spinel."  He pointed to a section of roof within easy viewing distance.

"Tidiness is a virtue."    

"It's next to godliness."

Undiluted happiness made him laugh out loud and he made his way to the jut of roof above one of the windows and watched as Sakura-san and Li-kun and Keroberus fussed over Daidouji-san.  He thought maybe Tomoyo smiled out the window at him, even though he knew she didn't know he was there.  "It certainly is.  Let's go home.  I have part of my history essay to finish."


End file.
